Pink and Green Go Together
by ryoku1
Summary: From the orphanage to the school yard, Ren never did have much of a choice about Nora. That ended up working out for him though, so it wasn't so bad.


Note: I wrote this almost a year ago, and forgot to put it here. Thus, it isn't canon compliant any more.

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Ren had two favorite places in the orphanage. The first, was the kitchen. Even as a kid, he'd loved watching the cooks scurry from place to place, adding spices and ingredients to sizzling pans, and boiling pots. There was something about all that energy, about all of the movement and reactions, and the physical process of making something from base ingredients. When he was tall enough to not be trampled under larger feet, and proved quite effectively that he could dodge a yelling woman as she raced across the kitchen to put out a fire, he was granted permanent chore duties in the kitchen. Three times a day he'd go to the kitchens, and help with all the cooking. This often got him out of lessons early, and gave him a lot of free time outside of meal perpetration, while the other kids had different chores to attend to. These things made him rather unpopular with the rest of the kids.

He learned early on that being fast was really all he was good at. He certainly couldn't take a hit well, and hitting back seemed too risky. He hit back once, the lot of good it did him, and got caught. He'd been dragged off and told that if he was caught fighting again, he'd be off kitchen duty. Ren didn't fight back after that, but he got good at running, and hiding, which led to his second favorite place in the orphanage.

The old abandoned library, was, as Nora used to put it, was where fun went to die, and rather dusty. Ren adored it. He had a wonderful time hiding on top of the book shelves (cause no one looked there), lazing in the sun shine of the old cracked window, and going through dusty books that were much older than he was. It was peaceful, and it was a good place for relaxing, and getting away from the inevitable noise that came from a gaggle of small children being housed together in relatively crapped quarters.

All was well, until the loud, obnoxious girl in pink, that would one day fit into the 'childhood friend' category, decided that it was the perfect place to build forts. Nora, as he would learn her name later, had little recreational interest in books, but she liked making messes, and she liked building things and then quickly knocking them down again. Ironically, the first time Ren paid her any notice, was the day she discovered the library, and the towering bookshelves. It was also the day that he realized she could push over a bookshelf three times her size, full of books, and with him sitting on top of it. Needless to say, that first meeting didn't go very well.

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Nora called him 'Pink Eye' for almost three months after that. She claimed it was a compliment, because his eyes WERE pink, and they were pretty. She liked pink. To Ren, it seemed more like an insult, or a way of warning all the other children that he was somehow infectious (which worked to his advantage, but was entirely not the point). That was, until one of the workers actually heard her call him 'Pink Eye' and pulled her aside to inform her that 'Pink Eye' was indeed an infectious disease, and that nice friends didn't call their friends infectious diseases, even if she thought they were nice nicknames. Nora's response was to ask him if he had pink eye, and to not listen to him when he told her no. She got better at listening at some point, but he couldn't pinpoint when, and, if he was being honest, the improvement was only marginal. Nora didn't need to listen to know things.

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Once Nora decided they were friends (Ren wasn't exactly in compliance with her for a while at the beginning) that was really the end of the matter. She'd drag him out to play with the other kids, and she'd sit on top of the bookshelves with him, throwing bits of food at anyone unfortunate (or foolish) enough to wandered past the library door. She fell asleep there sometimes too. He always told her not to, but she didn't listen. That was just Nora. She fell off one time, and he freaked out, only for her to roll over, still asleep. That too, was just Nora.

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Nora liked to play strange games, most of which where generally bad for his health. In one of them she pretended to be an Ursa. The game was apply called 'Ursa Attack!' and started at any moment, after she'd said 'Ursa Attack!' in a high pitched growly sort of noise. She'd then chase after him trying to eat him, which did actually include some general gnawing for artistic effect. He got better at dodging her, and she started playfully calling him a ninja, with choppy hands for added emphasis. The other kids stopped teasing him at some point, but he didn't notice that till much later.

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When they were 11 a couple of Beowolves took an interest in the orphanage. He and Nora watched in amazement, as the demure little woman who ran the orphanage pulled down a huge battle axe off of the wall and decimated the Grimm to cheers and whoops. Afterwords, she simply placed the axe back on the wall, where it had always been, and had a cup of tea. None of the children crossed her from then on, and the older kids made up stories about the day that their matron took down 10 Beowolves by herself. Nora was one of those story tellers. From then on, Nora was hooked on the idea of Grimm, and fighting them, strangely, for recreational purposes. There was no dealing with her after that.

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At 13 Nora was accepted to Signal. Ren wasn't. They didn't end up going there.

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At 15, in their second year at Umbra Academy, Ren still wasn't really sure that being a huntsman was his true calling. He was getting better at fighting, but his achievements paled in comparison to Nora's, which he was used to in general. He could probably get a job as a cook somewhere, but then he'd have to find a place to live, preferably back in Vale, because Vacuo's heat was not pleasant. But when he really sat down and considered it, even if he didn't think he was particularly skilled at fighting, Ren found that he enjoyed the lifestyle, for the exact opposite reasons Nora did. She liked the thick of it, the energy literally pounding through her. He liked the studying, the application of things he'd learned. All of the fighting came easy to Nora. She'd just swing her hammer, and things happened. Not much stood in her way. For him, it wasn't nearly as easy, but it was nice when he could read about something, and then use that knowledge. He probably should have figured it out a long time ago that he liked studying, and using what he studied, but the fact that it took him so long to realize wasn't all that strange. He tended to be a little dense about things that were always obvious to Nora. The bad part, is she never explained them, cause she was just as bad with her words as he was, but in the opposite direction. It sorta worked out anyway. He'd probably never be the powerhouse that Nora was, but at this point, they'd sorta followed each other, and he brought something else to the table. He wasn't exactly sure what that was, but he was sure Nora appreciated it, in her own, strange way.

That was why, on their first day of class at Beacon (he had insisted that they go back to Vail, the heat was just awful) he wasn't worried. Even if sloths didn't make the same noises Nora did. Sloth noises were too quiet for Nora to imitate.


End file.
